At Douarnenez, in summer, the inhabitants are accustomed to an inroad of visitors who come for the bathing season, and there is a little colony of artists who live comfortably at the principal inns (en pension for five or six francs a day), but it is not as quiet as Pont-Aven, of which we shall speak in the next chapter, for the streets are closely built and badly paved, and the busy inhabitants wear sabots which are rattled down to the shore at all hours of the day and night, according to the tide. Moreover, the inhabitants of the town are scarcely typical Bretons; they are a little demoralised by success in trade, a little inclined to smuggling, and decidedly fond of drinking. The men, living hard lives, facing the most fearful storms of the Atlantic in their exposed little boats, out sometimes for days without a take, are apt to be uproarious when on shore. The hardy, bright-featured women of Cornouaille, whose faces are becoming so familiar to us in these pages, have a rather sad and reckless look at Douarnenez; their homes are not too tidy as a rule; the little children play in streets which steam with refuse from the sardine factories, where their elder sisters are working in gangs, with bare feet and skirts tucked up to their knees, sifting, and sorting, and cooking sardines, and singing snatches of Breton songs the while. The lower streets, steep and narrow, are blocked with fish-carts, and the port is crowded with boats with nets drying in festoons. But the view of Douarnenez seen at a little distance out at sea, with its high rocks and overhanging trees almost reaching to the water’s edge, and above, the spire of the old church of Ploaré standing sharp against the sky, will remain best in the memory. There is no end to the beauties of the bay of Douarnenez, if we explore the neighbourhood, starting off early for the day and not returning until sundown.
In the evening there is a great Bohemian gathering at the Hôtel du Commerce; its artistic visitors overflow into the street, and make themselves heard as well as seen. There is a clatter of tongues and a cloud of smoke issuing from the little café presided over by the neat figure in the sketch. Those who have been to the Hôtel du Commerce at Douarnenez will recognise the portrait at once; those who have not must picture to themselves a girl with dark hair and brown complexion, a headdress and bodice in which scarlet and gold are intermingled, a dark skirt with a border of yellow or orange, and a spotless white apron and sleeves. In soft shoes she flits silently through the rooms and supplies our clamorous wants in turn; neither remonstrance nor flattery will move her, or cause her to raise her eyes.
The children of Douarnenez have learned to beg, and along the broad road which leads to Quimper, beggars are stationed at intervals to waylay the charitable. Driving home in the little covered carriage shown in the sketch, a dark object appears before us on the way. Near it, at the side of the road, is a little shed roughly made with poles and brambles, and, protruding from it, two sabots filled with straw, two sticks, and a pair of bragous bras. The rest of the structure consists of dried ferns, and a poor deaf human creature propped up to receive the alms of the charitable, a grim figure watching and waiting in the sun and wind.
CHAPTER IX.
Concarneau—Pont-Aven—Quimperlé.
Fourteen miles south-east of Quimper is Concarneau, another important fishing station of Cornouaille. It is well to go thither by road, in order to see the view of Quimper and the valley below, when a few miles out of the town; a view which few travellers see in these days. The old town of Concarneau, with its fortifications and towers, called “Ville Close,” which in its position somewhat resembles St. Malo, is approached by a drawbridge from the mainland, and at high tide is surrounded by water; it consists of one long irregular street with old houses shut in by dark walls, through the loopholes of which we see the sea. The nominal population of Concarneau is 5000, but in the Faubourg Ste. Croix, where the fleet of fishing-boats come and go at every tide, the population is upwards of 10,000. There is a fine modern aquarium, and there are several interesting monuments in the immediate neighbourhood, but there is nothing very remarkable in the situation of the town itself, and it is certainly not a place for visitors to stay in; the work of life at Concarneau is to catch and cure little fishes, and the odours of the dead and the dying, the cured and the fried, pervade the air. The hedges are made of the cuttings of sardine boxes.
We happen to see Concarneau at its best on a fine summer’s morning, when the wide quay of the Faubourg Ste. Croix, where the sketch is taken, is alive with people, the majority on their way to church across the drawbridge in the Ville Close. The little fleet of fishing-boats is moored in a cluster at the quay; the nets are drying in the sun en masse, and the cork floats hang from the masts in graceful festoons. Everyone is in holiday attire, and seems bent upon going somewhere—to church, for a drive in the country, or for an excursion out to sea. The fishermen and workmen have for the most part disappeared into the wine-shops, whence their hilarity overflows into the streets. The girls employed in the sardine factories have put on their best dresses and neatest shoes, and go in companies of six or eight together to the church. Their smooth white caps and lappets glisten in the clear air which blows lightly from the south-east, and the odours of sardines are for the time forgotten. It is the time and the spot from which to take away an impression of Concarneau, for its ordinary everyday aspect is not romantic. The procession of people coming from church down the old-fashioned street, shut in by walls and towers, makes a good picture. The majority wear their proper costume, as sketched on opposite page; a few only have fallen into temptation, and carry bonnets, trains, and high heels across the Place.